Jacksonville mayor, sheriff address programs to stop the violence

Preventing violent crimes before they happen is a challenge that comes with many solutions. With recent high-profile shootings and murders in Jacksonville, there is a renewed focus on stop the violence efforts that have a proven track record of success, as well as new ideas in the pipeline.

News 104.5 WOKV spent nearly an hour with Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry and Sheriff Mike Williams for a conversation covering many topics.

Sheriff Williams says in the days after the killing of 7-year-old Heydi Villanueva on the Westside, JSO redoubled efforts on gang initiatives.

“Where do we know we need to be, are we there enough, and again being very critical of ourselves and our own operations," Williams said.

The Sheriff said his senior leadership met on Wednesday to explore a different vantage point to the same target.

“It is literally a small number of people in this community that drive a significant portion, probably up to 40 percent of the violence in this community. And it’s not that they’re victimizing all of us in this community but they’ve victimizing themselves over and over and over again which drives up rates, drives up numbers," Williams said.

Both the Sheriff and Mayor intimated that the business community is likely to get behind a rebooted gun bounty program, which has seen past success.

“You dangle $1,000 in front of a lot of those people and they’ll pick up the phone and call if they know it’s anonymous. We had success with it before.  Got away from it a little bit, no reason to do that”, said Williams.

Mayor Curry continuously advocated for mentoring programs, and encouraged participating in the Kids Hope Alliance. And he pushed for final City Council approval of some-$300,000 in funding for faith-based and grassroots organizations.

“The expectation would be just pick one kid gets touched through that, they’re not a part of this crime we’re seeing. We’ll never know that, but that’s the kind of work we have to do”, Curry said.

Cox Media Group